Macedonia is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, surrounded, clock-wise from the north, by Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. People are extremely friendly here and particularly fascinated by travelers due to the difficulty in obtaining visas into the EU.

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Hitching

Just thumbing a direction will produce quick results with people eager to help. There are many truck drivers headed to the border of Greece but may be reluctant to take you through. This appears to be the same for most borders within the Balkan area. Most of the time they will drive with you to the border, ask you to get out and walk through the border and enter the truck again once both of you are through.

People are usually friendly and ready to help, although most car drivers will not understand the concept of hitch-hiking and private taxi is a major form of public transport due to high level of unemployment. Therefore, make sure before you board a vehicle that the driver is not an informal taxi. Also make sure to keep an eye on the road you are going, if the driver makes a sudden turn around, changes his natural path or takes another direction, it is likely that he is either a taxi driver or that he thinks he is doing good by bringing you to the local bus station. You therefore will have to say, if necessary again and again, that you do 'autostop' all the way.

According to Rozwal's experience (November-December 2011) after hitchhiking in Macedonia in all directions, the above problems seemed redundant. He has never come across any hidden taxi nor have had any issues with people not understanding the concept of hitch-hiking. No-one asked for money too. In general, Macedonia was hitch-friendly and the use of signs with number plates' symbols of cities worked just fine (instead of writing Skopje you can write SK, Prilep: PP, Veles: VE, Bitola: BT, Ohrid: OH, etc.).

ChrisHitTheRoad had exactly the same experience in July 2014 as Rozwal. He has even been invited to stay for 3 nights with a family in Skopje and gave him a tour through the city.

For me Macedonia is one of the best european countries for hitchiking. Usually I waited only short time, people were very nice and no one wanted to pay for a lift. (August 2016)

November 2018 - We hitchhiked about 260 km in one day from Orchid to Strumica by both, car and truck drivers. People where really nice. They invited us for food & drinks and also no one asked us for money